It figures that the more time ( or lazy ) I am, the more my blog gets updated.

Candle: Yes, I did a lot of thinking during that little road trip to Malmo. Well, when you're in a car careening down the highway, and all the other passengers are asleep, you have no alternative but to stare out at the fields and lose yourself in thought. Hahaha...

But I admit, that road trip, with the endless scenery of green fields, forest, and the giant windmills spinning slowly, will always be etched in my mind.

The Best in the World

Anyway, plagiarised from Newsweek this week, is a special report of The Best Countries in the World.

The article lists the best countries in the world in several categories, for example State, People, Business, Science, and the Arts.

So for example, the best country to be an idealist is The Netherlands, for their curious mixture of business and altruism, while the best country to be young is Turkey, with a median age of 25.

People who want to work overseas, the best country to be an expatriate is Britain, which is keen on attracting those with degrees and talent to their shores.

But another interesting report is the one that asks: "Can poor people be more self-satisfied than the rich?"

The article states that "a World Value Survey of people in 65 nations... decided that the world's happiest people lived in Nigeria"

"Those ranked second to fifth in the happiness survey were the people of Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico."

Huh????? All poor, developing nations? What happened to the big guns, like the US of A, Japan, France? Does it really show that poorer people are happier than the rich?

Well, not exactly. Firstly, every single person on this earth has their own personal definition of happiness. So which means there are, oh, say about 1billion different ideas of happiness on earth?

Then satisfaction too is different from happiness. Remember this theory in Management? That one could be in a state of negative motivation, satisfaction, or positive motivation? ( Ok, I forgot what that theory was ) The idea was that one could be satisfied with one's work, but not be positively motivated to do more for it. You get enuff peanuts to make you happy, but not enough to make you want to work for bananas.

The key point in the article, however, is that "happiness can be a tantalizing but elusive goal - a ripe apple in a tree that's always just out of reach" When you have no money, you want more money. When you have money, you want more money.

Actually in a past, past issue of Newsweek, there was an example that clearly highlighted this. When you're stuck in an office, you envy the guy who's flying off somewhere on a business trip. When you're on economy, you envy the guy in first class
The guy in first class envies the guy in business
The guy in business sees the guy who managed to charter a private jet
And the guy in the private jet sees Donald Trump getting onto his own privately owned jet!

The cycle of envy and want goes on and on. And as it turns, our dissatisfaction grows, regardless of the fact that we may earn more than the average Nigerian, have enough to eat, a roof over our heads, and friends and family who love us and all our money-scheming ways.

Also, there's another theory that "satisfying relationships are a more important influence on happiness than income". So the more or better relationships you have with the people around you would be more likely to affect your happiness.

Judging from some friends, I would say this is true to some extent too. What's the point of working in a nice office, with a nice pay, but where half the people would rather see you dead six feet under? Why not work for far less the money, in a place where you are appreciated, and where people are nice to you and respect you? ( Another reason why I prefer to work with young, impressionable kids )

Well, we all have differing ideas of happiness, as evidenced by this article. If you guys get a hand on Newsweek, ( perhaps the free browsing copies at Borders ) read the article. It's enlightening in more ways than one.

Oh, and incidentally? In their Top 10 countries list, Singapore ranks as 9, with the description "City-state with a corporate mind-set. Clean government", beating Canada. ( We beat Canada?? ) Turtle may be glad to know that Sweden ranks first, because of "high marks for health care and innovation".

So you see, even as much as life sucks in Singapore, we still only lost to 8 other countries to be one of the best to live in. Maybe that's something worth considering over. ;)

Remember Friendster?

So this slacker was checking out the Friendster website this day. ( Yes, remember what Friendster is? ) I got bored, felt kaypoh, and decided to nose around to see who I knew, what happened to who I knew, and so on.

The result is rather interesting. In my messages box, I found a guy that had apparently created a website dedicated to himself, himself and himself. The writing on his page was good, but the clincher was the advert he had made for himself, linking people to his Friendster testimonials. Ok.... Too bad the way he dressed in it made him look like some Chippendale boytoy... ok, maybe I'm being mean here, but check it out for yourselves.

Then it turns out that Sophia ( fellow European traveller ) found my profile, through Jul. Click, added her as friend. Then got curious, wondering who else Jul knew that I possibly did as well.

Click on Jul's friends, found Jordan, ( irritating guy who kept suanning and pinching me ) and other ex-classmates from CJC. Apparently these people out there update their Friendster profiles a whole lot more frequently than I do ( mine still says I'm a student ) and so it's an interesting way to see what's happened to all your old classmates. ( and also kaypohly look at their testimonials to see what others write about them and laugh )

For one, all the girls appear to have become chiobus over time. Did I miss a trend somewhere? Even the already-cute seems to have become impossibly beautiful, as according to their profiles. Why can't someone just put up a photo of them just having woken up with bed hair or something? Plain honesty is so under-appreciated.

Then I kaypohed some more. Hm, this guy is now working as this, this girl is working as that, this girl is in another relationship, this one still likes so-n-so. Please tell me this photo has been altered, because no one someone can look that good in a photo. This guy hasn't changed a bit. This guy has strange hair. This guy watches Naruto. This guy knows... him??? OMG it's him! And suddenly you find someone you thought had dropped off the face of the earth. Now it turns out that with a few clicks, a bit more waiting time, you could be in contact with someone whom, for all you knew, could have died long ago.

Well... that few clicks is still impending at the time I'm writing this, because Friendster also takes a goddamn long time to load. Bleah. And also because I'm hesitant to come out of me comfy little shell to make contact with the world outside again. C'mon, it took me that long just to polish the scales.

Should I make the effort to contact someone whom I haven't seen for years, and will probably not remain in contact with after this? I don't like the idea of collecting Friendster profiles as some kind of hobby, or as a scoreboard for my popularity, but sometimes, maybe you're just curious about what's happened to the people you used to know, and how have they turned out. ( The downside is that it could turn out they've become even bigger bastards than when you knew them )

Or maybe I should just do other stuff with my time, like blog. ;) Well, at least it's inspired me to at least update my profile a little.

Occupation: Full-time Slacker, who teaches tuition for the $$$

Stockholm

Is now up on the Europe Blog.

Met Candle and Yenn to watch Supersize me just last night, and Candle was regaling me with tales of shopping in Thailand. Argh... I can't wait... That wholesale market she visited is especially tempting...

Of course, something else compounding the problem is that I may potentially be out of work around oct/nov/dec, when the exams end, and I don't know if the parents want me to tutor their kids in dec, in prep for sec. sch/O levels/N levels. Now I'm considering all kinds of wayward options to earn money during that time, including:

-Selling T-shirts again, coming up with new designs, and using the old stock from the last venture.
-Setting up some kind of holiday class in my house, like creative writing.
-Starving during those 3 months, and concentrating on other creative ventures, like writing or drawing
-Going to Thailand around mid-end Nov, find some funky stuff, buy back in bulk and sell to people in Dec. :p Anyone needs cheap Xmas presents to give to other people? Hahaha...
-Do everything on my list. What have I got to lose?

So which do you guys think is a more viable option?

Incidentally, after doing some research on the Net, I think I'll be able to go to Thailand for about SGD600, which includes airfare, and accomo for 3N in Chiangmai, and 3N in Bangkok, though I'm thinking of 4N Chiangmai and 2N Bangkok instead. I'll probably aim for mid-end Nov, because of above plans, and I've decided that party should consist of no more than 4 people. Anymore, and decision-making goes haywire.

And I hope to make day trips into Cambodia or Laos too. Apparently it can be arranged from Thailand. Hm...

Ok, need money. Fast. Hard. Any old ladies with gold jewellery around my estate? *Peeps out the window*

SuperSize Me

Watch this show.... and never eat fast food again.

By now most of you know the story of Morgan Spurlock. Spurred on by the lawsuit against Mc's by 2 obese girls, who claimed that Ronald McD was responsible for their obese condition, he went on a 30 day McDiet, eating nothing but Mc's meals, 3X a day, and supersized if they asked him if he wanted it.

And by God, the supersized McMeal? Will probably feed 4 of us. The fries are gigantic and the amount of Coke is about half a gallon. In fact, on the 3rd day of his diet, he threw up the supersized meal in the carpark, because it was so damn much food.

Yes, he's probably insane. There's only so far you can go in the name of artistic license, and in this case, it would have probably shot his liver to pieces, ruined his sex life, and made him gain over 10 kg in a month. ( which he actually did )

And it's good. In fact, I met Candle before the movie, and we ate at BK. I jokingly told her that this would probably be the last time we ate fast food after watching the movie. And in fact, during the movie I suddenly had strong cravings for broccoli. Because Spurlock looks so gross while he's eating Mc's that you just don't feel like eating anymore. Bleah. Thank goodness we didn't even buy popcorn in.

But in the end, the movie is just one side of the Blame Game. Mc's puts the onus on parents to teach their kids. He says Mc's doesn't provide information for parents to teach their kids. The govt is under too much pressure from the food companies to provide healthier food in school canteens. The corporations say they're just doing business.

Yeargh. Please. Everyone knows that fast food is bad for you. If you refuse to believe that, buy chicken from KFC and squeeze the oil out onto the paper. There's no blotter paper absorbent enough to absorb all that oil. Lookit all the mayo BK and Mc's puts on its fish burgers. Check out all the salt on the fries. [Jul has this habit of asking for extra salt from BK and sprinkling it on his fries. Eek. Like they're not doused enough already]

The thing making it worse is that most Americans don't exercise much anymore. Take the average day of an office worker. You wake up, walk to the MRT, go to your office, and you sit there for the whole day, till lunch, and then you sit somemore, till you go home, and sleep. There's not much exercise time in there. Experts say we should have at least 30 mins of exercise a day to keep fit, but face it, who has that time?

Gods. Our office and fast food culture is making us all fat and unhealthy. And who says progress is good for us?

Sorry if my blog went a bit haywire. After getting Candle's SMS, I logged on to discover... all the words on my blog had disappeared. WTF WTF WTF. The problem has hopefully been rectified and you guys are hopefully now reading this as normal.
 
Watashi no Nihon Shiken wa ii desu ne! Watashi, to I-en san, to Lin-Da san ima, wa le-be-ru II no gakusei desu. Rai shu no do yoobi, minna san wa ku-ra-n pu-lin-su ho-te-ru de tabe masu! Yoku desu! Fukuda sensei, doomo arigato gozaimasu! 
  
The Parisian leg is up on the Europe blog. Check it out.  

In today's Sunday Lifestyle, Colin Goh commented that, upon coming back to Singapore for 2 weeks after living in another country, he now feels his Singaporeanness coming back to him. As in, he desperately wants to get out of the country. :p My sympathies, but at least he managed to live somewhere else and make a living there, while I could only begone for a few weeks, and still have to come back here.
 
"Still have to come back here". That simple sentence carries a ton of undertones with it. The strongest of which is the underlying wish that I didn't have to come back. That I could stay over there, explore the rest of the world, and never come back to Singapore again.
 
Though I know that part of it is pure impulse, the trip also opened a kind of hunger for something, which was never there before. It was as if, having eaten some kind of forbidden fairy food, I'm now filled with the longing of it. The longing to see new worlds. The longing to open my eyes again. The longing to watch the sun set over Prague Castle.
 
*Focus. Reality. Here*
 
The result of it is that now I'm filled with a kind of wanderlust, the kind that hits kender in the Dragonlance world, and I want to desperately leave Singapore again. Or at least, see something new other than the all-too-familiar HDB blocks, which seem more and more like the walls of a well, confining me to the bottom, while cruelly allowing me the view of the sky.
 
I will crawl out of this well. Having been shown the way, now knowing that there is a way out, how can I be content for long here?
 
Once you let the bird of the cage, and let it fly, how can you expect it to be happy in its cage again? Even if it is fed, watered, and allowed to play on a golden perch, it will not be happy anymore. Far more merciful to let it out, and let it die under the blue sky.
 
*Focus. Here. Now*
 
Hence I now plan my Thailand trip, browsing through the Lonely Planet website for sights to see in Bangkok and Chiangmai, other than the usual shopping venues. Hence I pulled Yenn one Saturday out of the getting-boring Orchard road into the bustle of Chinatown, ending up drinking teh and munching on kaya balls in a kopitiam, after browsing through much of the tourist trappy stuff and cheena souvenirs. [Side: We actually met Alwin there, and on the way home, I met Denis and Siqi. Why's so many people congregating at Chinatown all of a sudden?] Too bad I couldn't convince her to Little India. :p
 
I'm on a restless phase. Humph. Where will this wind blow me to next?